According to Juniper Networks' annual Mobile Threat Report, mobile malware grew by 614 percent from March 2012 to March 2013. This equates to 276,259 troublesome apps and vulnerabilities.

The study took a look at about 1.85 million total apps and vulnerabilities in that period of time. This 614 percent was a huge hike from the mobile malware increase of only 155 percent from March 2011 to March 2012.

About 48 percent of the malware came from SMS trojans, which get users to send text messages to numbers ran by cyber thieves. Another 29 percent came from fake installs, the remaining 19 percent came from Trojan Spy malware.

There were fake versions of apps that proved to be malicious, and the top imitators were of Angry Birds, Adobe Flash, Google Play and Skype.

"There's no doubt mobility will continue to be a pervasive and disruptive force across every industry," said Troy Vennon, Juniper Networks Mobile Threat Center director. "We have found that it has created an easy business opportunity for malware developers who are becoming savvy in their approach to quickly turn profits in a rapidly growing market. We anticipate that similar to the evolution of PC-based threats, mobile attacks will continue to increase and become more sophisticated in the coming years."

Juniper Networks added that Android users are the main target of mobile malware, mainly because Android makes up about 60 percent of the smartphone market globally. In fact, the new report says that 92 percent of malware found was directed at Android devices.

Another reason that Android is a prime target is because users rarely update to the latest software versions of the OS, meaning that they're not receiving the latest security updates from Google.

Want to stay safe out there? Run software updates on your phones and avoid buying apps from unknown app stores. The same goes for users on any other platform; not just Android.

If you assumed that was because Android was the operating system with the most exploitable vulnerabilities, you would be wrong. In fact, just the opposite is true. It’s Apple’s iOS that was the source of almost all the documented mobile application vulnerabilities among the mobile platforms Symantec monitored, including Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and the like. iOS accounted for 387 of 415 documented vulnerabilities across all mobile platforms – a bit more than 93 percent, found.

If someone is dumb enough to download a 'free' app from someplace sketchy and bypass the security settings in android to allow them to install a non market third party app and get infected with some form of android malware, then they are getting what they deserve. (this is where most of the android infections come from - third party app sites)

quote: So it seems like Apple is more secure where it matters (the apps)

That's entirely up to the developers there. Apps can be written to take advantage of the vulnerabilities present in iOS/android, both Google and Apple do the same thing...

1. Approve the app for sale for the store.

2. Once the app is reported by someone to be malicious, remove said app from app/play store.

Neither company does a perfect job of screening apps before allowing their sale...

Yeah, but the Apple screening process is more in depth. After all, in addition to the basic screening (probably similar to Google's) they also have an internal non-compete requirement to fulfill. Even third party developers that had their product on the market before Apple aren't immune. Wait, what were we talking about again?

It's basically irrelevant because it's far harder to exploit this in iOS due to the curated AppStore.If it were easy, it would be done.

The fact that most phones and tablets used by business and government are iOS devices, and most consumer banking and Internet purchasing are done through iOS should mean that it should be targeted much more often. But as it's far more difficult, it isn't.